Has there ever been a time you were enjoy web surfing only to be asked out of nowhere if you would like to play online poker, or maybe to buy a $500 foot massager? Have you ever had one, two, three, even ten popups obscure your view of a page? If this has happened to you, then you know all too well what it is like to have adware on your computer. Adware blocks your use of the web and slows down your PC’s performance, but it can also be an early warning sign of worse things to come. Where there is adware, spyware and viruses often follow. Spyware might just tell some software vendor how you are using their program. But spyware might also email your credit card numbers to a criminal’s office half way around the world. And viruses can destroy your computer altogether. Even if you avoid the very worst damage these three kinds of malware can do, chances are your hard drive will slow down to a crawl on the simplest of applications.